


Five Times Rupert Knew Exactly What To Do and One Time He Didn't

by Silex



Category: Original Work
Genre: 5 Times, Gen, Slice of Life, Superheroes, Supervillains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 11:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17744681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: Rupert had put his past behind him, and was happily past his supervillainous antics from all those years ago. Then the novice heroine Miss Bolt stepped into his life. He'd never imagined that he'd be a mentor figure to anyone, let alone a superhero, but it seemed that was what the Fates had in story for him.





	Five Times Rupert Knew Exactly What To Do and One Time He Didn't

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pt_tucker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pt_tucker/gifts).



> First time I've ever tried to write a fic in this format, hope I did it right...

  1. **The First Meeting**



It was the sort of thing he’d feared since he’d retired all those years ago, his past coming back to haunt him.

Children screaming, the smell of something burning, the sounds of a fight happening somewhere just out of sight, and a blue and yellow clad young woman standing looking helpless and confused in the middle of it all.

The woman pulled out a smart phone as a crowd of puzzled onlookers began to gather around her.

“It’s Miss Bolt!” One of the children shouted, causing a chain reaction as the others ran up to her, asking for her autograph, for her to fly, or melt an annoying sibling with her laser eyes.

He’d heard of her, a young, up and coming superheroine who chose to focus on smaller issues, outreach programs and generally doing good deeds while leaving larger threats to the more established heroes.

And she was standing in his backyard during the annual family reunion, barbeque and drunken fight between the in-laws.

“Rupert?” Linda, his wife of nearly twenty years came up to him, “What’s going on? Did you invite her?”

At the same time Miss Bolt looked up from her phone, “This is twenty-eight Metalmark Lane, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Linda replied while he was still trying to think of what to say.

After all this time he should have thought of something, but he was drawing a complete blank.

Linda was looking at him now, so was Miss Bolt.

“That’s not the real Miss Bolt,” he whispered to his wife, “She’s an impersonator I hired for the party, thought it might keep the kids from terrorizing the neighborhood.”

“It’s a very good costume, and her hair is almost perfect,” Linda whispered back, “And I didn’t hear a car pull up.”

Ignoring the part about her not arriving in a car, Rupert went with what he could address, “Not as good as the Elvis that officiated Candice’s wedding.”

“That’s not fair, bringing that up. And I hope you threw out the pictures that she sent us from that,” Linda huffed, and then turned to see what her niece was getting up to.

“Check the medicine cabinet,” Rupert muttered as his wife walked away. He didn’t know why Linda always insisted on inviting her niece when Candice was nothing but trouble.

Miss Bolt had no doubt overheard the whole exchange and had wisely decided to play along.

For the next half hour the superheroine did what she could to amuse the children while he finished grilling hotdogs, burgers and some horrific looking vegetable based patties that Linda had insisted he make because ‘with pepper jack cheese, guacamole and enough hot sauce they’re one of the best things ever’. He trusted Linda on that, having never gotten up the courage to try one himself.

Once the kids were safely occupied with eating and the rest of the guests were distracted by the spectacle Candice’s latest husband was making of himself in the pool, Miss Bolt cornered him by the grill.

“I know who you are.”

He ignored her and continued cleaning the grill. If it was going to come to this the least he could do was deprive her of the dramatic moment that she wanted. It was the sort of thing that could make a young hero’s career, finding out the truth of what had happened to Barron Voodoo and bringing him to justice.

“And this is really awkward,” she continued, “What am I supposed to do?”

That wasn’t what he expected.

“Leave me alone and pretend this never happened?” He offered, not really expecting her to comply. He hadn’t invoked any occult magics since his retirement so he had no way of influencing her or bending her to his will. The incident with the Cthonic Overlords, where he and several of his compatriots had ended up working alongside no fewer than three superhero teams to save the world from certain annihilation, had really made him stop and reexamine some of the life choices he’d made and the beings he’d dealt with. Interestingly enough, the same applied to several of those entities as well and when half of the loa you worked with decided that it was time to retire you had to consider following suit. Besides, getting drunk and possessed by the most malevolent entities you could safely call upon was a young man’s game and he’d gotten tired of waking up hungover with little to no recollection of the crime spree he’d been a part of.

She looked at him long and hard before giving her answer.

“Okay.”

Miss Bolt flew off without another comment, leaving him to wonder when the hammer would fall.

  1. **The Phone Call**



He hadn’t forgotten about it, but he certainly wasn’t thinking about his encounter with Miss Bolt when he was standing in line at the drugstore to pick up Linda’s migraine pills and assorted other sundries. There was no reason for him to expect anything out of the ordinary when his phone rang.

“Don’t worry, I remembered to get the batteries and the popsicles,” he answered his phone without looking at the number because of course it would be Linda calling him to remind him, “Should I get a bag of those mints you like too?”

The surprised sputtering on the other end of the line made it clear that it wasn’t Linda.

“I’m sorry,” he laughed at his mistaken assumption, “Rupert speaking can I –”

“I can’t believe your real name’s actually Rupert…”

It took him several seconds to place the voice and when he did he still wasn’t sure if he wanted to believe it.

“I shouldn’t be laughing, I’m sorry,” Miss Bolt apologized unnecessarily. There was a good reason he’d been more careful than most in keeping his supervillain alias separate from his secret identity.

“Why are you calling me?” Not how had she gotten him number, because he had a fairly good idea of that. Since their first encounter he’d done his research and discovered that in addition to the standard heroic package of flying, super strength, speed, and near invulnerability, Miss Bolt had originally been involved in some electronics themed superheroics. Her first appearance had been as Miss _Volt_ , but she’d quickly changed her name and scrubbed her social media accounts of it due to its association with the currently incarcerated Killervolt. Rupert had checked and there wasn’t any family resemblance between the two of them.

The young hero hemmed and hawed before finally blurting out, “I need your help.”

“What?”

“I said I need your last name and date of birth,” the young man at the pharmacy counter said acidly, “Unless your call is that important, in which case I’d suggest stepping away from the counter.”

Rupert stepped away, looking sheepishly at the person behind him in line.

“Doctor Mole has rebuilt the Tectonic Destabilization Wave Generator and since you were there when the Low Underlord first built the thing I figured that you might have some advice,” Miss Bolt said quickly, “Supershear and the Geomancer are on standby for damage control, but no one wants to make the first move in case he activates the thing.”

“Have them go in,” Rupert sighed, “Underlord was a snake oil salesman. He sold that piece of junk and who knows how many other useless doomsday devices to the League of Dread and anyone else who would listen to his sales pitch. He got his when sold the Greenhouse Accelerator to Queen Karnivore. The Serpentians aren’t very tolerant of that kind of thing.

Miss Bolt swallowed loudly, apparently having never previously considered what it meant that the Low Underlord had mysteriously vanished after his dealings with the lizard people, “So the Wave Generator is a dud?”

“It’ll make a big boom and some tremors if you use it near a volcano or a fault, but it wasn’t the threat that everyone made it up to be. When Tigon destroyed the thing everyone just assumed that some part was lost and the League wasn’t about to admit that they’d been taken.”

“Thanks, I’ll let them know.”

Miss Bolt hung up.

Rupert sighed and made his way to the back of the line.

 

  1. **The Late Night Call**



Rupert had gone to the bedroom to catch up on his reading while Linda was in the living room watching the season finale of _The Next Bravest_. Stupid sounding name aside, it was better than most reality shows. Watching people, powered and otherwise, who wanted to become heroes compete for an internship with the Protectors was fun for mindless entertainment. He’d lost interest in the current season after ReVenger, an inner city vigilante, had been voted out half way through. Mixed messages aside, the kid had a lot of potential and after the challenge where the would-be heroes had to help out the Make-A-Wish Foundation Rupert had been rooting for him. Seeing ReVenger, without hesitation, swap out his gasmask and tac vest for greasepaint and a clown costume and then preform as ‘Fisto the Clown’, much to the delight of the sick children had been something else. It was a shame that in the very next episode the kid flubbed a mock-interview with actors playing the part of hostile reporters.

“You need to get in here now!” Linda shouted from the living room, “You’re not going to believe what’s happening!”

Rupert had just found the place he’d left off in the book he’d been reading and didn’t feel terribly inclined to get out of bed, “Unless they’re broadcasting live footage of the Venusian invasion I’m not interested.”

“That kid you liked, the one all in black and green, is on as a special guest judge for the final vote.”

Rupert was out of bed and in the living room as fast as he could make it. Stupid, manipulative media, bringing back a fan favorite, but at the same time it would be funny to watch the final contestants, who in his opinion were the three most bland people to ever put on capes, argue their cases to someone who was more than just talk. He was sure that back when he had been active the heroes he’d clashed with had been far more creative than the bunch out there now.

Sometime during Innertia’s attempt at justifying her comments about Sirenian’s heroic alias Rupert heard his cellphone ring, but he ignored it. Sirenian had taken things remarkably well, proving that she had thick skin, as well as superhumanly dense muscles and bones, but Rupert was in agreement with the judges that Innertia’s comments had crossed a line. The other finalist, the incredibly generic Ultra Powers, looked like he wanted to leave as Innertia went on a tangent about how heroes needed to be aware of implications, oblivious to the irony given sort of comments she tended to make.

When the episode finally ended, with Ultra Powers winning, to no one’s surprise, and then shocking everyone by asking if ReVenger could get the internship instead of him. Watching ReVenger struggling to keep from tearing up, his gasmask doing little to hide how emotional he was getting, Linda burst out laughing.

“Can you imagine,” she gasped out between fits of giggles, “Him working with the Protectors?”

At the mental image of ReVenger working alongside some of the most stereotypical traditional superheroes Rupert couldn’t help joining his wife in laughing at the absurdity of it all. ReVenger certainly wasn’t the usual type that they ended up recruiting, but the Protectors needed some shaking up. They’d been at the top of their game when he’d gone up against them, but that was years ago. Lately they’d been falling behind in things and it would be a shame for the organization to fall into obscurity like so many of the other old heroic organizations.

As Linda went to get herself a glass of milk to calm down Rupert went to check who had called.

He didn’t recognize the number at first, but they’d left a voicemail.

A long one he saw when he looked.

“Hi, it’s me…you know who. Darnit I’m not used to leaving messages like this when I’m…to people who aren’t…Okay, let me restart this. We’ve got an emergency down at…Okay, you know what, here’s how I’m handling this. Staring from the top. Gee, I hope this isn’t a wrong number. A guy calling himself Warwolf just put up a video where he gave a list of famous landmarks he plans on targeting for destruction and with a name like that he’s bound to be occult. I’ve got no clue why this was passed to me because I don’t do occult stuff. Magic isn’t my thing and I never bothered getting tested to see if I was susceptible to lycanthropy…no wait, the proper term is therianthropy right? That’s why I’m calling you – this is so outside of what I normally do. I’d be fine if they just wanted me to protect one of the places, but they want me to track this guy down and stop him. Finding him won’t be a problem, he’s all over the internet right now and I’m already working on that, but when I do find him… I’m just hoping that you can give me a quick rundown on what I should know before I go and deal with…What the hell? Wow, okay, I just looked through the file on this guy and checked his blog. What kind of villain theme is that? A Trebuchet? Really? Okay, sorry to bother you. No magic involved. Umm, sorry, wrong number.”

Linda came back in, finishing her glass of milk as Rupert deleted the voicemail.

“Who was it?”

He shook his head and shrugged, “A wrong number apparently.”

 

  1. **The Emergency**



Another unknown number and as tempting as it was to let it go to voicemail, Rupert answered.

Odds were it was a telemarketer, but he’d tried to do a phone number search after the last call and found that the number wasn’t connected to anyone. Miss Bolt had done tech stuff, so she was smart enough not to be unmasked by her cellphone.

Explosions and the sound of something crashing could be heard in the background on the other end.

Maybe it wasn’t a telemarketer then. Or if it was they’d called the wrong person one too many times.

Just in case he figured the best bet was to answer.

“Rupert speaking.”

More noise and shouting followed.

Just as he was about to hang up a frantic, unfamiliar male voice came on.

“We need backup! Get Archon, Aradia and anyone else you can here! I’ve got no idea how to close this portal and Liger’s been possessed by…something.”

“Who is this?” Rupert held the phone back to take another look at the number calling as though that might help, “And how did you get this number?”

“Peregrine and you’re on it listed as magic on Bolt’s phone so I figured it was worth a shot. I dropped my communicator when Liger threw me through the wall and…”

“I don’t think I’m going to be helpful,” Rupert was good at thinking on his feet, coming up with witty one-liners to taunt heroes with required a sharp mind, “I’m Rupert the Astounding. I do magic shows for children’s parties. I met Miss Bolt at a charity event and gave her my number just in case she was ever back in the area and wanted to work together again.”

“Ah, that makes sense, it’s the kind of thing she does all the time,” Peregrine said, far more calmly that the noises in the background dictated, “I don’t suppose you know Aradia’s number, do you?”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” Rupert bit back a chuckle. What was it with kids these days thinking that everyone knew their friends? He heard it all the time from his own grandchildren, always tagging him on their Facebook pages as though he cared about what happened to someone on the football team or how annoying one of their teachers was.

“Anything about possession?”

“Hmm,” Rupert had to think that one over, technically he did, but what he knew might not be helpful, “Depends. If they want anything involving glass or chili oil you’re on your own.”

Peregrine hung up without further comment and Rupert went to the living room to turn on the news to see if he could find out what that call had been about. With all the heroes who ‘secretly’ worked as reporters and photographers he was sure that someone would be reporting live from the scene.

 

  1. **The Crisis**



Linda had suggested that he get a hobby or maybe a part time job to give him something to do. He suspected that it had something to do with the fact that she’d started hosting luncheons for her chapter of the Red Hat Society on weekends and wanted him out of her hair, but he didn’t dare say as much. Linda hadn’t been keen on his suggestion that he might join the local quilting bee, something about him not being trustworthy with needles, which was funny since he was fairly sure that she didn’t know about what he’d done before they met. After walking around town to see if any of the local businesses were hiring he’d saw that the library was looking for volunteers and decided that it seemed like a nice, quiet way to get out of the house.

Besides, it would let him catch up on his reading.

Today, like most, was a quiet day at the library. He and the librarian had finished sorting and shelving books, looking through the donations for anything surprising and were now killing time.

He was reading the latest Clive Cussler thriller and she was browsing the internet, checking out the latest celebrity gossip. Some tabloid was running a series of articles on ‘super fashion faux pas’ and she had several comments to make on the villains and heroes featured in the article. He really didn’t need to know about Depthcharge’s ‘bubble headed blunder’, nor did he care Ohm’s new hair style ‘looked like it was achieved by licking his finger and sticking it in an electrical socket’, but when there was a picture of Miss Bolt he was at least able to pretend to care that her new hairstyle was ‘hip and trend setting’.

His cellphone ringing was loud in the small library, earning him a glare. He shrugged an apology and went to the vestibule to answer it. Another unknown number, which he’d taken to answering, much to Linda’s chagrin. Mostly they were telemarketers or wrong numbers, but there was no telling when it would be something.

Today it was something.

“I need advice on keeping my identity a secret. I’ve got a date with…a coworker and I don’t want them to know… me out of uniform. They’re a lot more lax with the identity thing around other heroes than I am and even if it works out I want to keep those two parts of my life separate for now.”

With kids and grandkids of his own, Rupert was far more familiar with the whole dating situation and all its complexities than he wanted to, “What exactly are you worried about?”

“They’ve only seen me in costume.”

Right off the bat that didn’t sound like a good start to Rupert. He’d would have at least expected that the two of them had run-ins as their secret identities.

“Can you just not go?” Rupert knew the answer would be no, he’d asked his daughter and then granddaughters the same question when they came to him with boy troubles.

“No, they’re really nice,” Miss Bolt said, “And besides, I can’t imagine not dating someone who’s not a hero and having it work out long term. Too many questions, you know?”

“I don’t,” Rupert answered honestly. Discounting that fling with Morgause, which didn’t count because he hadn’t exactly been the one at the wheel at the time, he had waited until after retiring for that sort of thing.

“Oh.”

He was surprised that she hadn’t thought of something for a situation like this, back in his day, much like boy scouts, the majority of heroes lived by the motto of ‘be prepared’. He was pretty sure that his back pain could be traced back to the charity event at the museum where he had been stopped by half a dozen heroes who had either managed to stash their costumes nearby or, somehow, have them on under bespoke suits and dresses.

“But if I were in your situation I’d pick a tall building, say that you want to meet them on top of it and then order takeout and have a picnic up there,” he suggested, “That way you can be in your…uniform and if they say anything it’s on them not you.”

“I can’t believe I never thought of that!” Miss Bolt laughed, “Thanks.”

The librarian fixed him with a questioning stare as he walked back in.

Expecting them to want to know what the call had been about, he was surprised when they turned the computer screen to him and shook their head.

“What is it about animal themed superheroes wearing costumes that look like the fur of that animal? I could get villains doing it, but really, who thinks ‘I know, I’ll look like I made a pair of pants out of my namesake?’

Unfortunately, even if the article was about heroes, the picture on the computer screen was of Vipress in her skin tight, scaled getup. He’d done a few heists back in the day. It was impressive that she was still going at it after all this time, he just wished that the picture had been from back in her heyday rather than a recent one.

 

  1. **The Accident**



The accident hadn’t been his fault, which was quickly determined by the blood-alcohol level of the other driver, and fortunately both he and Linda were alright. The other driver though…

It turned out that he’d been driving without a license, having lost it due to repeatedly driving drunk. He hadn’t been arrested this time, though there was a good case for it. Instead he was under observation at a psych ward. Rupert may have been retired, but there were still a few loa willing to do a favor for him whether he asked for it or not. You couldn’t go out drinking with beings like that and not end up with a few who considered you a friend and took it personally when some drunk left you hospitalized for a week.

There was no reason for him to have been kept that long, he was sure of it. His neck was fine, his leg could get better just as well at home, and it was a lot for Linda to be stopping by to visit him every day.

He suspected that it had to do with some nosy intern looking over the x-rays and asking questions. Rupert knew he had plenty of old injuries to explain, and had a valid mundane explanation for all of them individually. It was just that when you put them together that it was harder to justify, especially when your medical records from before a certain point were spotty at best.

With so many people looking to unmask heroes and find out villains a lot of them were willing to make connections, and if Miss Bolt had managed to find him…

His former lifestyle had left him paranoid, he knew it, but how often did supervillains get to retire? There was General Winter, sure, though he’d only managed that by taking over a small eastern-European country and no one dared go after him for fear of further destabilizing the region. And maybe Dr. Macabre had managed it as well, if the stories about what was going in South America was true, but running a cloning operation was hardly what Rupert would call retirement. He had no illusions about what would happen if he was found out and just last year the Screaming Skull had been found after all these years. The trial had been televised and he and Linda had watched the whole thing play out, mortified by the whole thing for very different reasons.

Rupert was nowhere near as bad as the Skull had been, had never aspired to be, but the trial had sparked renewed interest in what had happened to Baron Voodoo and numerous other vanished villains. Everyone hoped to be the next person to find a supervillain living on their street and several superheroic agencies had to start call centers to handle the calls coming in.

It was too easy to imagine one of the techs from the radiology looking at healed beaks, bits of shrapnel and who knew what else, rushing to the phone, not knowing what they’d found, but knowing that they’d found something.

Maybe he was worrying over nothing, but he would have felt better if he had known why he was still in the hospital. The nurses and doctors were vague with answers, only adding to his worry, and when he had, in a moment of desperation, tried to call Miss Bolt of course the number didn’t connect. She was every bit as careful as he had been, for all the good it did him.

Drifting into an uneasy sleep, he waited for whatever would come, hoping that Linda wouldn’t get dragged into things. She knew nothing about his past and thought that he’d worked as a used car salesman before they met, which was why he didn’t like talking about things.

The next morning he awoke to a commotion. He knew something was wrong because the morning nurse came in late, apologizing profusely, and only half paying attention as she took his vitals, before running out without explaining what was going on.

He would have been more worried if she’d seemed frightened rather than excited.

Figuring that there was nothing to lose he pressed the call button and waited.

Surprisingly a doctor showed up, looking as perturbed as Rupert felt.

“Nothing’s wrong,” the doctor reassured, “I’m covering for the nurse on duty for a few minutes so she can go down to the pediatric wing. Miss Bolt’s made a surprise visit and, understandably, a lot of the staff here want to meet her.”

Rupert nodded.

It made sense, she could handle things with the least commotion since this was the sort of thing she did when she wasn’t fighting crime. She could come by, have her visit and pick him up with minimal fuss. Her being the one was probably for the best, he might at least be able to explain that Linda and the rest of his family didn’t know about his past. If anyone could break it gently to them it would be her.

Sure enough, a few hours later, she showed up at his room, knocking politely and waiting for him to invite her in.

He did and saw that she was followed by the neurologist who had been on call to treat Linda’s concussion after the accident. Rupert had talked to the doctor and found him pleasant enough, but now he was revising his opinion based on how the man was whispering excitedly to Miss Bolt.

She nodded gravely, walked over to Rupert’s bed and looked him straight in the eye.

“Do you know why I’m here?”

Rupert nodded.

“Did you ever operate under the supervillain alias Ricochet?”

He burst out laughing.

How on earth could the doctor have made a mistake like that? Even if anyone knew what Ricochet had looked like without his helmet and mask, the man had been much taller than him and at least fifty pounds heavier, and everyone knew that he’d been vaporized during a freak accident with a particle accelerator.

Miss Bolt gave the doctor an ‘I-told-you-so’ look and then smiled at Rupert, “Everyone’s so obsessed with unmasking these days I’m even more afraid of my dentist than usual, someday he’ll notice a chipped tooth and start wondering.”

“You’re a real hero,” he smiled.

“I try,” she agreed, “I just wish that there weren’t so many hard choices all the time.”

“That’s life,” he shrugged, “You make good ones and bad ones.”

She nodded and left.

She’d kept his secret and the next time she called him he was going to ask her why.

And then he’d thank her.


End file.
